I used to get told all the time that if I waited until I got a little bit older (say, late twenties, early thirties) to get married that I wouldn’t have to worry so much about my friends being able to afford coming to my wedding. The logic here is that we’d all have paid off most of our college debt if we had any, and if we work, we’d have climbed the ladder a bit by now and have higher salaries. Inevitably no matter where the wedding was, a decent handful of people would need to travel, and that of course would affect my friends, who are all around my age.

Well, why am I at that stage of life now and I don’t feel any relief in this area, and instead I feel more guilt?

Two out of my three bridesmaids do not have stable, “career” type jobs. One even said to me after I got engaged and asked her to be my bridesmaid, “Please don’t make me go all over the world for your wedding activities.” I know how stressful it can be to be a maid-of-honor since I was one a few years ago, but I looked at the travel opportunities for the weddings and parties as more excuses for me to travel and see more places of the world. The other thing is that I know I have sacrificed and done a lot for my close friends so that they wouldn’t see it as such a “weight” on them to have to travel or do anything for my wedding. Aren’t they supposed to be happy and excited for me for this occasion? Or is everything even remotely out of their comfort zone just seen as a massive inconvenience or over-expense?

I haven’t remembered my dreams that vividly in the last few weeks, so I guess last night was a whole stream of them. I can’t seem to remember any of them now except for just one.

I am in some big dark room playing paintball with Chris and his cousins. Mind you, I don’t even know what paintball looks like and have only heard of it. I see all these different colors everywhere, and suddenly something knocks my left hand, and the diamond in my engagement ring cracks. An entire piece of it falls off. I hold my hand close to my eyes to examine it. Yep – it’s shattered. Too bad we didn’t get it insured.

Chris’s cousin comes over to inspect and has a worried look on his face. After a few moments of looking at it, he pats Chris on the back and says, “It’s okay. it won’t be that difficult to replace!”

Ouch.

The title of this post is misleading because no, I didn’t go to my 10-year high school reunion, but I do have friends and acquaintances who did attend and either sent me photos or posted photos from the event on Facebook. To any and all photos and mentions of the event, I am completely indifferent and have zero regrets that I did not attend and was not in town to attend.

I’m not sure where this indifference really came from. I look back apathetically at all areas of my schooling except for middle school, which I found to be the period of my life where I not only became the most confident (and perhaps the most stubborn), but actually realized I didn’t want to be like everyone else. I look back fondly on Lowell and Wellesley for its academics, but for social areas, I feel apathy to disdain. When I look back at Lowell, I just think of a lot of conformity, a lot of “everyone’s doing it, so we should do it, too!”, and a lot of pressure to try to outdo everyone else. Lowell, being over 60% Asian by the numbers (but probably more accurately 90% in a sea of black-haired people), was not at all representative of the real world and probably skewed my vision of what the “real world” could look like. Wellesley, with all its high achieving “I can conquer the world” women also skewed my vision of how competitive the world is. I’m not very competitive by personality, and I felt the weight of the world on me there. And I felt like I was failing.

While it would be nice to see some people I haven’t seen in over ten years now, I think that Facebook has allowed me to electronically “keep in touch” with those I somewhat cared about but didn’t feel the need to reach out to and vice versa. Maybe if Facebook didn’t exist, I would have a stronger inclination to care that such an event just passed me by.

I’ve contacted about 20 different venues in the last several days across the Melbourne and Los Angeles areas for our wedding. People who say that wedding planning is stressful aren’t kidding. I’ve been following multiple wedding websites and their planning articles, and they’ve said that the most research-intense period is the beginning when you are choosing a venue, which makes a lot of sense. The initial research helps you determine what ballpark costs are per area for the specific things you want and also lets you see more accurately what you can afford given a certain level of budget. Once the venue is chosen, everything else tends to fall into place much quicker and easier, such as florists, dress, external vendors like photo booths and cake vendor, etc.

Are there wedding planners out there who would do this research phase for us across two cities when we live in neither one?

The other day, Chris and I were at his aunt and uncle’s house, and I was sharing stories about my mother’s reaction to finding out my dad had blockages in his arteries that required his bypass surgery last month. As I’m sharing these stories regarding how the need for surgery to my mother sounded like a death sentence (hence, why she called me in tears, saying that I needed to come home because my father may die the next week), his oldest female cousin’s face reflected a shock and pain that few others have expressed. Most people have laughed or chuckled at the over reaction, but his cousin said she could imagine being in my mom’s position and hearing the news, thinking that her husband’s life was going to end, as well as hers. She said she could even imagine responding to the situation similarly, if not exactly the same as my mom did.

As I am telling Chris’s family about my parents, they are becoming more and more eager to meet them to see what they are like in person. What will be interesting is how they all get along with each other, and what my mother will actually think of all of them.

I sat at lunch today with a good friend of mine. We both come from dysfunctional families, yet the difference between us seems to be that he’s managed to disentangle himself from the feelings of guilt, and I have not. Maybe it’s because he’s older, or maybe it’s because he’s a man that he’s able to do this more easily than I am. He clearly loves his mother, but he has consciously made a promise to himself to not give into her emotional manipulation. Why is that so much easier said than done?

My uncle e-mailed me when I told him what was going on with my parents. He said to me, you just need to say, “yeah, yeah, yeah” to all that nonsense because you know her accusations aren’t true, and recognize that they cannot and will not change their criticizing ways. The only thing you can do is to control the way you respond to it all. It seems to be a common piece of advice from both friends and professional sources, but it will clearly be an ongoing challenge.

The older I get, the more and more I realize how complex feelings can be. When we are children, everything seems so simple. We are happy or sad or angry. We feel confused or determined or apathetic. As we get older, all of these feelings seem to interweave amongst themselves, and it becomes more difficult to just say we feel one emotion or another.

Maybe I’m not meeting or spending time with the right people, or maybe it’s because people want to simplify things in an attempt to avoid a genuine understanding, but I’m having that feeling again that no one understands what I am trying to say.

I had a friend over for dinner tonight who I just became reacquainted with over the last few months. My mom was spending the night at the hospital with my dad, for what will be his ninth and hopefully last night there before getting discharged, so I had the house to myself for once. I was expressing to him what an arduous endeavor it’s been being back and my constant feeling of emotional and physical exhaustion, and I said that it’s even harder without my brother around. He asked where he was.

That’s when it hit me that I never told him about what happened to Ed.

I told him the condensed version, and of course, he was shocked and had a pained look on his face as I described the situation. I expressed anger and frustration with my family, and he expressed empathy towards them and their lack of understanding of mental illness.

I don’t know why, but while empathy is always something I value greatly, an empathy towards this always seems to infuriate me.

It’s not as simple as a blame game, or feeling like if they understood or tried harder to understand that maybe Ed would be here today. It’s also about taking responsibility and realizing that someone needs help, and we need to give it. It’s about understanding the vulnerability of a human being to criticism and pain. It’s about realizing it’s not always about ourselves and how an action or state of being will reflect on us and acknowledging it’s about the person next to you.

Every time I tell the short or long version of “where is Ed now,” I feel pain all over my body. I don’t like talking about it, but I want to be open about it to increase awareness of the types of pain and suffering that human beings go through and that these are not isolated experiences. I want to make sure Ed is not forgotten and that he is constantly acknowledged and part of my life. I get irritated when people say, “You don’t have to tell me what happened – it’s okay,” even though they are saying it partly half because they don’t want to cause me more pain, and of course, half because they may not want to really know. I hate being afraid of the truth, so I want others to know the truth.

I spent the night with my dad in his room at the hospital last night and woke up every hour or so when a nurse or lab technician would come in to check on things. As I was getting up this morning, I felt the deepest wave of respect for both of my parents. All I’m doing in life right now is working and taking care of my dad part time temporarily, and I’m already completely worn out. I have no idea how they took care of my grandma while she was sick in 1995, took care of me and Ed, and also did both of their full time jobs.

I went to the bathroom and stared at myself in the mirror. All I could see was a blotchy face, flat, greasy hair, dark circles under my eyes, and what appears to be a new indent on the right side of my face, marking the fact that I am aging along with my parents. I’m going to be 29 in two months. Ugh.

My mom and I spent an excruciating five hours waiting for a call or page from the surgeon to let us know the status of my dad’s coronary artery bypass surgery today. Within less than 45 minutes of bringing him into the pre-operating room, the pager goes off, and I immediately feel sick, wondering, why would they be paging us so soon? Has something already gone wrong?

Apparently, it was just the surgeon and the anesthesiologist who wanted to meet with us beforehand. Thank God.

The surgery officially began around 2pm, and then at about 6pm, the surgeon calls us in the waiting room and informs us that the surgery was a success. My dad’s heart was strong the entire time, and he anticipates a very smooth recovery. I can’t remember the last time I felt more relief. I think my mom felt a bit more calm once my aunt joined us in the waiting room.

We saw him for a bit in the ICU, but he hadn’t woken up yet. My aunt and I went home while my mom insisted that she stay with him overnight. His room was too small, so the nurse asked her to stay in the waiting room.

After I got home, ate dinner, and got ready for bed, I realized that this was the first time I’d ever slept in this house by myself. There were times when my brother was away for a trip, but there’s always been at least two other people in this house sleeping at night when I’ve been home. I felt this deep pain when I looked over at my brother’s bed, knowing that he wasn’t here with us today. The entire day today felt weird without him. It’s like I expected him to be there in the waiting room, but he wasn’t. The other part of me thought, he’s out there somewhere, so why haven’t I told him myself about our dad’s surgery? When is he going to come back?

It doesn’t feel like he’s really gone, and it made me miss him even more today. Realistically, I know it would have been really hard on him, probably even more so than on my mom and me because he tends to get the brunt of our mother’s wrath, particularly in trying situations like this, but I still miss him and wish he were here. Times like this will just be a constant reminder to me that his life ended too soon, and that from now on, I will need to deal with all of our family life events all by myself.

My dad never admits fear. He’s that stereotypical man. He always wants to seem like he is in control, like he knows what he’s doing and there’s no possible way he can be wrong. As you can imagine, that hasn’t really made any of our lives easier because we’ve butted heads quite a bit. I guess that’s what happens when you are stubborn and your dad is even more stubborn. Oh, and then your mom beats both of you for stubbornness.

We were on the phone today and I was explaining to him all of the things I’ve read about this coronary artery bypass surgery and what the recovery was going to look like. I also told him things that one of his doctors explained to me. These are all the things you need to expect, and these are all the things that you need to do to ensure a speedy recovery, I said. I asked him how he felt, and my dad hesitated and said, “Well, there’s just a fear of the unknown.” He wouldn’t fully say he had a fear of the unknown, but it’s my dad’s way of opening up and communicating to me that he is scared.

This is one of those moments in life we have when we get older, and we realize that although our parents are our parents and they are older, in these situations, it’s almost as though the tables have turned. Now, we have to take the responsibility to be the parents and they have to be the children. We have to take care of them and ensure that they don’t worry and going to be just fine.